


Blanket of Stars

by windandthestars



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, F/M, New Year's Eve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-27 05:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12074736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: It had started with a shared cigarette, a little white lie, and a spectacular view.--An (angsty) exploration of what might've happened if Mac had cheated on Brian with Will instead of the other way around.





	Blanket of Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for language and mentions of sex.

She shouldn’t have kissed him last year at midnight. That much is clear to her now. She should have stopped herself then, but she’s never been one to give much forethought to following her instincts and she’s not about to start now. Covered in rich cream-colored sheets, wrapped in the smell of sex and cigarettes she’s not thinking about anything but the crackling of the fire in the hearth.

“Good?” Will had asked as he had fallen onto the bed beside her. “Good,” she had echoed with a laugh, and he was, good. He was so good to her, so much better than Brian had ever been, would ever be. Even the sex was better.

In the beginning that had been easier to admit, a careful explanation for the tryst she should've had enough sense to end. As time had passed, the justification had worn thin, but it was no less true, even with the guilt that edged in hollowing out her joy.

It had started with a shared cigarette, a little white lie, and a spectacular view. A year later it would end here with a fuck, raised voices, and tears of theatrical purport.

She had never told him that Brian had put an end to things between them, although at one time he had. She had never told him that she had still shared Brian’s toothbrush, his coffee maker, and a worn copy of Wuthering Heights. She never told him that she had spent most nights on the couch or that the apartment she was renting- the one he thought she lived in- was her refuge, the place she was staying now that she had finally found the courage to end it.

She’d always been one to take things as they came, whims and impulses had served her well. She hadn’t planned it, but she knows tonight will be the night, the night the traitorous words sneak out of her mouth, the night morality steps back into her life.

She rolls over to watch Will flick ashes into a glass, melted ice rimming the bottom. He thinks she’s still asleep, lost among the stars, the dreamy wisps of night sky he had bought her to ring in the new year. Three hundred and sixty five million, he had said, one million for each day. That couldn’t possibly be true, they both knew that, but it sounded right. It was sweet, romantic, a blanket of stars that was hers alone.

She can’t see them from here. There’s a wall of windows in the living room downstairs, but up here there’s only the one window, Will silhouetted against the night sky. 

He’s brooding. She can tell by the tilt of his head and the rhythmic flicking of his index finger against his cigarette, tapping out whatever melody is playing through his mind. As much as it pains her, she loves him like this, her secret Will full of cracks and uneven places, places his father’s temper had worn through, places untouched by his mother’s love. 

It’s a harsh view of things. In some ways it's a theory too rough to hold up to Will’s wide grin and smiling eyes; she knows he’s more battered and bruised than broken. Time had a way of healing things it seemed. It’s a familiar thought, an awkward comfort; she would leave him no more broken than he already was.


End file.
